July 8, 2008

First off, like the new picture of you, it looks great. Second, I work on some of the Kashi Cereal Projects and I have to tell you that I was quite amused to see our “Good Friends” cereal making your site.

As you can see, that is the Left Coast ideal of what our 7 Grains can do for folks. The man and the woman picture actually is a characterization that depicts two former neighbors in Rialto, CA, who used to feud with one another, until they both realized that they both loved our “Good Friends” cereal and as such she no longer needed to complain about his son’s loud car stereo or he about her daughter’s drunken soirees by the pool, when she is gone. In fact they have become “Good Friends”. If only we could sneak some “Good Friends” into the Gaza Strip, alongside the Kassam rockets and some into northern Israel, imagine what the world could be!! Of course we would have to remove the Kosher designation. ;-)

I would like to send you some samples of our other fine products, though not of this one, which doesn’t seem to tickle your fine central Wisconsin sensibilities. We do make many other very good products which I think you might enjoy both visually as an ad and as a foodstuff. If so inclined, please send me your work address and I will send you off a care package.

Thanks for the great blog site and for your appreciation of the Kinks!!

I'm betting Ray Davies doesn't eat that shit. He gets his cereals out of a twelve ounce can, just like all real men. I used to have a Schaefer can Ray emptied, then threw into the crowd at the Spectrum circa 1974.

Did he really say tickle your sensibilities? No one who wrote that third paragraph could ever appreciate The Kinks, unless his first name is Lola. It must be a woman.

I shouldn't denigrate Newark. It's on a much grander scale. Rialto manages to be both insignificent and horrible at the same time. I can count on the fingers of one hand the places I have been in this country worse than Rialto.

I now live in a leafy Boston suburb, known for its participation in the first battle of the American Revolution. Every time I get irritated or depressed about life in Massachusetts, I think of places like Rialto in the so-called "Inland Empire" of Southern California, and recall my life growing up there. Nothing cheers me up faster than looking outside and seeing it isn't California. There are trees, tasteful historic surroundings, and actual seasons to remind you that you are alive.

My mood may be improved by thoughts of never going home again, but not as elevated as the grinning idiots on the box. If "Good Friends" cereal can do that for Rialto residents with dysfunctional families, think what ecstasy might await the rest of us.

P.S.-Blake: You're on to something! Too bad about the racial harmony baloney.

Don't you think by calling it "Good Friends" they are trying to deny that the people pictured are gay. Rob and Big make a joke about that. (I found the Rob and Big video after 1jpb mentioned it.) I think "Good Friends" is the racial harmony cereal. The "we love gay people" cereal must be something else. Not sure what.

I wonder if "Bitter Enemies", the Cereal of Imperial Hegemony, would sell if it were sponsored by the Hoover Institute up there by Stanford, and had Mother Theresa and Christopher Hitchens faces on it?

The only way to remain good friends with anybody for any length of time is to maintain a respectful distance from that person and especially so at breakfast time, sharing no more than a few perfunctory words at that most fraught time of the day.

If the two feuding neighbors were fans of "Good Friends" before they were featured on the box, it means that the name "Good Friends" existed prior, right? How could they have been the inspiration for the cereal if they already liked it and were already consumers of it before Kashi exploited their relationship? This is fishy if you ask me. Which came first, the cereal or the friends?

I've had this cereal box on the table because it's nice to look at, anyway if you had a similar fantasy as a ground-locked kid. It's been there, apparently, since 2004, if one is to believe the date on the box.

It's easily possible. I had some Bob Evans' placemats for over a decade until a dog ate them, advertising dessert.

"Zachary Paul Sire has left a new comment on your post "What happens when you blog about cereal?": Ann, I think you've been duped.That Kashi rep is an impostor.If the two feuding neighbors were fans of "Good Friends" before they were featured on the box, it means that the name "Good Friends" existed prior, right? How could they have been the inspiration for the cereal if they already liked it and were already consumers of it before Kashi exploited their relationship? This is fishy if you ask me. Which came first, the cereal or the friends?"

Zachary, I thought of that as I was writing the post and I was going to call attention to it, but I decided that probably the cereal has been around for a while, with different photos on the front, and that people write in to Kashi, telling their Kashi friendship stories and making a pitch that they should be on the next package. Similar to Wheaties, which has had many "champions" over the years. Don't you think that's the most likely situation?

I thought that too. But it still bothers me not knowing how/why they decided to call it "Good Friends" in the first place. It's an inappropriate name for a cereal.

I'm thinking there was an original name (Twigs N' Friends?) and then they changed it to "Good Friends" once they got their first piece of fan mail. But they need to be up front about it if they're going to put out such an offensive packaging design and brand name.

So I think the Palladian/Althouse box duo is a go, depending how 'gay' of a 'gay face' Palladian can make.

If he can go full Anderson Cooper 'gay face', then I say its own, but if all he can pull of is a Rupert Everett 'gay face', then that wouldn't be nearly gay enough, and it'd be just the dreaded two white people together.

My wife loves Kashi Go Lean I've tried a lot of cereals and that has to be the most tasteless one ever made. Hoping it was good for me, I ate about a dozen boxes over the last couple of years, with about 5 pounds of sugar. Per box. There's still a box in my cupboard, and it may never be opened. Can I mail it to you?

At first, I thought Kashi was a Japanese brand. If Kellogg's owns it, it certainly loses it's cachet.

I think I'll wait unti Kellogg's makes a Kashi brand of cereal made from leftovers from other cereal runs that used to be discarded, combined with recycled cereal boxes and floor sweepings.

Call it Mother Jones' No Wastees, the first true enviro-friendly cereal.On the cover would be a stern but pretty pan-ethnic 50 year old ex-hippie Earth Mother and her catch-phrase: There are starving kids in Darfur! Don't make baby Gaia cry.

I think they should show more than just racial harmony. Imagine the Kashi box possibilities!

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